This proposal for a single-family residence reveals, upon analysis, the prior attention to the topographical and landscape contours of the property. The spatial arrangement of the building seeks morphological unification with the natural surroundings. This effect also dilutes a dense housing program with the virtues of the south and west direction and its consequential solar gains. The land slope is used to divide the parcel into two levels, one with more public characteristics and the other more private. To this end the public/private split of the parcels — associated with a similar separation of the program into two modules — defines the respective social functions.
The design of these two bands is characterized by curved lines both in plan and in section. A more transparent central element is inserted in the middle of these two volumes, serving as an access point to the house and as connection between both volumes. At the lowest level, inserted into the underside of the entry volume and between the two bodies, a swimming pool unfolds.
The morphological division aims to clarify the social functions of domestic spaces and avoid the excessive presence of the construction with the help of the ledge and the use of middle floors as a subterfuge. The two modules, similar in their undulating forms and in their rough-material look, open more at the lowest level and are more airtight in the upper area facing the public road. The transparent space of the entry is presented as an immaterial bridge, almost floating between these two volumes/ground levels over the pool.
The aim of the landscape to mimic the construction, attributing characteristics of pre-existent minerals, determined the extent and fragmentation of various domestic areas as a height control subterfuge. The housing is developed on one floor, deforming itself in half floors (ascending half floor/descending half floor). An upper floor only appears on a minor portion, spatially treated as a hidden attic to accommodate two rooms for sporadically present family members, being a space that can be detached from the everyday life of the other proposed domestic rooms.
This project is to be named "Cardio-House," justifying a more conceptual vision, which claims the overlap between the work premises in its physical context. Cardio House is also complemented by the attempt to materialize or to decode spatially the emotional universe created for this specific client.
Notwithstanding the domestic complexity which would add to the methodological equation, but the project took as a starting point the hard working cardiologist couple, who in decompressing leisure time share a very close relationship with the aquatic world. Thus, the conceptual process was triggered, and would indelibly define the fluid design of the listed volumes which resemble a typical auricle/ventricle, left/right, natural symmetry/asymmetry partitioning, as a comprehensible unconscious universe of the client. This concept is further emphasized by the constant pulse and infinite reflection of the plane and interstitial water room, just like an aorta, which projects the aquatic space linking it to the surrounding vegetation, looking to make an anatomical or geomorphic whole.